


Minuet Dali

by Schgain



Category: BioShock
Genre: Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Nonbinary Jack, Sander's almost halfway decent in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 15:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10311674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schgain/pseuds/Schgain
Summary: A completed quadtych and a moment of hospitality, if not humanity.





	

Cohen is humming as he flits around fretting, occasionally yelling for a maid who never comes, who will likely never come. His dressing room is imperfect but clean, and that's all Jack can ask for recently. Cohen presses a mug of something warm into their hands, and they frown into it. 

"It's cider, angel," he sings, "soft as your sweater. An artist may benefit from drunkenness, but never a photographer, no. Your wits must be about you!" 

Jack doesn't entirely trust Cohen to not put something in the drink, but the taste of spider splicer organs is still warm and sick on their tongue, so they drink. It's warm, and sweet. And while they cannot ever remember drinking apple cider before the image of their cottage is seared again into their mind. Funny, it's always the same sepia image. They can't remember the colors of their own home, their own fields, their own orchard.

They frown, appetite lost, and set it still mostly full on the table. It's good, yes, but it tastes like homesickness and the gaps in their memory. 

"What, you don't _like_ it?" Cohen snaps, and Jack can tell he's about to fly into a fit again. "You come into my home and then deny my very hospitality, is that it?" They nod, then shake their head. Their voice is caught in their throat, and they don't even know the right answer. Cohen stalks forward, and Jack puts up their hands in a placating gesture- even switches off their plasmids for the moment. It doesn't calm him one bit- Jack sees Cohen scowl, and their eyes widen for a single moment before he raises his hand and backhands them. "Ingrate!" The force knocks them out of their chair and they catch themself on their shoulder.

Jack hears his saddle shoes on the floor. They don't look at him, just assumes a defensive stance as well as one can while sitting on the floor, and guards their face with their forearms. Sander is given pause.

"You can take out hordes of splicers, Olympian that you are," he says, almost softly, almost gently, "and yet one strike is enough to cow you? Once bitten twice shy, I imagine." he chuckles, not unkindly. But Jack doesn't know what he means. They've never been slapped like that before. Well, they don't think they'd ever been slapped before. The gaps in their memory grow bigger with each passing moment, repressing and resurfacing memories like dead fish on water: belly up and vulnerable. If there was a time before where they'd been hit, that would explain why the body knows how to cower, while their mind struggles for details.

"You must forgive me for that outburst, little moth. Had I known... It was Atlas, wasn't it?" says Sander Cohen with a bite to his tongue. "Impatient brute. What was the word I used earlier?"

"Blowhard," Jack manages to say. Their voice wavers. They wish they could melt into the floor, or the ocean, and never be seen again if it meant not having this conversation. 

"He doesn't see anything good in anyone these days. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if he left you strung to his fiddle the moment I'd jammed your radio!" 

"He didn't hit me," insists Jack.

Sander frowns. They can hear it in the hum he gives, uncertain. "Then who? Oh, never mind that, allow me." He extends one hand and when Jack takes it, pulls them to their feet. 

"Thank you." says Jack, smiling. It's an unpleasant smile, so they do not do it often. Shark teeth poke out from their lips, all jagged edges and awful, but Sander only smiles back. 

"Anything for a fellow artist," he says. "Why, _Wynand_ , you might be becoming my new favorite. I'll have to craft an ode in your name. A painting, perhaps? A minuet? Or perhaps you'd like to go all out, and a screenplay based on you?" 

Jack laughs, uncomfortable. "You're probably the only man in Rapture who hasn't been awful to me."

"You set the bar _so_ high, my shutterfly. Even Atlas?"

Jack's silence is telling. Sander's smile grows smug. "So I'd guessed correctly after all. Shows what taste you have in men." A gloved hand is laid on Jack's shoulder, and they start.

"What-- No, I--" Jack's hand flutters up to pull away Sander's. "You like men. I'm not a man." They close their eyes. If anyone can know and understand, it'd be Sander Cohen. "I'm not a man, but I'm very big, and people take me more seriously as a man." 

"A modern day Joan D'Arc?" Sander ventures. Jack searches their memory on what that means and comes up with... Nothing. The confusion is plain on their face. Sander waves a hand, dismissive. "Should my vocabulary fall short of your needs... Then tell me who and what you are."

"My name is Jack," they say, "I don't need to be anything."

Sander laughs at that and raises Jack's almost entirely forgotten mug of cider in something of a toast. "Certainly, my moth, certainly."


End file.
